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"Next Year's News This Week" HOW CLOSE IS MIRROR LIFE REALLY? By Berit Anderson _________ Why Read: The development of biological "mirror life" could spread unchecked, wiping out bacteria, fungus, plants, and animals, including humans. There is nearly unanimous scientific consensus in the field that further research should be halted - with one exception. The Chinese scientist leading the field doesn't want to stop. - bba _________ Innovation often emerges at the boundaries of disciplines, like the boundaries between sea and land, water, and air. It arises when intellectual diversity is protected and encouraged, when we choose to be selectively naive - to venture into unknown territories, without letting knowledge become a burden, to transcend the boundaries between environments, between what's possible and what's not. The mutant fish that crawls onto land or jumps into the air might not be a champion swimmer in water. It might even seem a bit "ugly" and "odd." But it's the odd fish that has the best chance to jump out of water. And fly. - Ting Zhu, the sole leading mirror-life researcher not to sign on to a joint article published in Nature calling for a moratorium on its further development
In the worlds of science and technology, ethics can be a slippery concept. There exists a constant struggle between the excitement of what we, as humans, can create and the responsibility of deciding what we should create. Too often, this struggle opens a gaping vacuum of moral risk. Take, for example, a "social" network that polarizes and exploits its users' insecurities. An AI model used to maximize bombing targets, which instructs us to kill hundreds of children. A therapy database purchased by an outside company that then sells its clients' private therapy chat logs to their employers. In all of the above (real) examples, experts are split: Is the technology underlying the harm a priceless innovation that must be funded and defended at all costs? Or is it a threat to humanity and the arguably thinning moral fibers upon which our social order is based? This is usually decided by a highly illogical process: if the excitement and financing for the technology outpace concern about its risks, no matter how dire they might be, it moves ahead. In the world of synthetic biology, the case of "mirror life" is a stunning exception.
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